This invention relates to livestock feeders and feed conveyors, and particularly to such conveyors which distribute feed to bunks located in several different locations.
Of course conveyors for conveying feed to livestock are well known. Recently they have included a conveyor belt positioned over the feeder bunk and often just to one side of the center line of the bunk. A silo unloader or other feed source drops feed onto the belt at one end and the belt conveys the feed away from that end. As the conveyor moves the feed along the bunk, a plow may move back and forth along the conveyor forcing the feed off the side of the belt into the bunk. Examples of this arrangement are shown in Patz, U.S. Pat. No. 4,381,734 and in Sweeney, U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,799.
These prior conveyors, however, had certain inherent disadvantages. For instance, generally the plow described above is attached to and moved by a vertical pulley system, that is, a system wherein the plane of the cables, chains or ropes driving the plow is vertical. In other words, one flight of the cable is located directly above the other. In the Patz patent described above this system is above the conveyor surface and exposes itself to the possibility of injuring livestock and operators of the system, and necessitates additional guards to avoid these hazards. Other feed conveyors employ a similar vertical system located beneath the conveyor, but these conveyors have an excessively large cross-sectional height and require a substantial amount of ceiling clearance inside the building, or require a large opening to be made in order to pass through a vertical divider such as a wall. Moreover there is a need in the marketplace for feed conveyor systems which can deliver feed to split lots and to multiple lots. Neither of the above described patents discloses such a feeder.
This invention relates to improvements to the abovedescribed systems and to solutions to the problems raised thereby.